November 8 – Having brought it back on the agenda only last week, FIFA president Gianni Infantino appears to have backtracked on the chances of an expanded 48-team World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
November 5 – Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Romania are considering an unlikely joint bid to host the 2030 World Cup.
October 31 – FIFA is bracing itself for another set of potentially incriminating leaks after admitting its computer systems have been hacked again.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 31 – The man who was once the second most powerful official in African football has been banned for life by FIFA, the latest influential figure to dramatically fall from grace.
October 31 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who stands for re-election in June next year, was banging the drum of the success of his own regime in the backyard of the man he beat to the presidency in 2016, yesterday.
October 30 – Funding the women’s game is still a battle for equality. FIFA announced a boost to the Women’s World Cup prize fund last week and president Gianni Infantino said that he hoped the women’s World Cup would soon generate similar income levels as the men’s competition.
October 29 – The world players’ union FIFPro says the huge increase in prize money announced last week by the FIFA Council for the women’s game is not enough to redress gender inequality.
By Andrew Warshaw
October 26 – Gianni Infantino’s pet plan to change the landscape of world football competition was shelved for another five months today as he all but admitted that not enough consultation had taken place.
October 26 – The Spanish league says it will appeal if prevented by FIFA from breaking new ground by staging the much-publicised fixture between Girona and Barcelona overseas in Miami in January.
October 26 – The head of the European Clubs Association, Juventus President Andrea Agnelli, has voiced his opposition to Gianni Infantino’s game-changing proposals to change the face of world football.
October 26 – Belgium have edged ahead of France to take outright top spot in FIFA’s world rankings with tiny Gibraltar the biggest risers thanks to their first two competitive wins this month.
October 26 – Football’s lawmakers are considering a ban on injury-time substitutions as a way of cutting down on time-wasting according to the Times newspaper.
October 25 – Gianni Infantino’s controversial $25 billion plan for two new international tournaments has come under further attack, this time from the umbrella body representing Europe’s major leagues.
By Paul Nicholson
October 25 – The FIFA Council meeting this Friday in Rwanda will look again at the proposed revised competition structure for the international calendar – a new Club World Cup competition, and a move towards some kind of Nations League. All underpinned by the elephant in the room of $25 billion of Saudi money.
October 24 – The geo-political financial partnership between Saudi Arabia and Japanese financiers SoftBank, rumoured to be the operators of the financial vehicle behind the $25 billion FIFA international calendar sell off, looks like it might have run into difficulties over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.